Guest Blog: The dilemma of whether to outsource your HR functions

Guest Blog: The dilemma of whether to outsource your HR functions

Nwes is proud of its partnerships with clients and businesses, and will always welcome guest blogs, particularly when we continue to work with their businesses moving forward.

We were delighted to hear from Peter Lawrence, of Human Capital Department.

Human Capital Department, based in King’s Lynn, provides HR advice and support to other SMEs as well as larger businesses. Since its launch in early 2016, the business has gone from strength to strength, and Peter was joined by Rod Lee in June 2016. Now with a network of associates who work with them as consultants, Human Capital Department is cementing its reputation as a known and trusted business with specialist expertise.

With a Virtual Office though the King’s Lynn Innovation Centre, Nwes’ flagship business centre in West Norfolk, and having won the ‘Innovator of the Year’ King’s Lynn Mayor’s Business Award in March 2017, Human Capital Department has enjoyed a successful year to date.

In a guest blog, Peter ponders the important subject of human resources for small and growing businesses, and discusses what HR functions may be able to be outsourced to help you grow your business.

Do you have to keep your HR functions in-house, or can you outsource some or all?

This may be a dilemma for many small businesses and, since forming Human Capital Department, I have spoken to many business owners about how outsourcing may support them with pretty much anything and everything related to people management and development.

People often look bewildered when I say that, so it always helps to provide examples of some of the HR support out there, and readily available to business owners, such as:

telephone helplines, where employers can phone in if they hit any people management problems including employment law

coaching and mentoring to business owners

payroll services

automated HR cloud solutions

HR project support to larger corporates.

and much more

Over the last 18 months or so, Human Capital Department has seen an increase in the number of retained clients showing there is a real need for the kind of support for everything related to Human Resources. Small businesses quite often do not have the staff nor the time to concentrate on HR aspects effectively. It is encouraging to see that small and growing businesses are now beginning to reach out, allowing organisations, such as ours to support them with their HR functions, so they can concentrate on building a successful business.

We are keen to offer as much help and advice as we can to other small and growing businesses as we are passionate about supporting business start-ups – Human Capital Department was a small start-up itself and we know how challenging starting and growing a business can be.

We had to seek advice ourselves and we turned to Nwes for business support – the skills base that we wanted to develop. Nwes has been a great help throughout the start-up process; we have sought advice from their business mentors, attended their short courses, taken out a business loan, and continue to utilise the virtual office telephone answering service and mail address.

One aspect of being a successful business is being able to reach out to experts and use their knowledge and support to help your own business grow, whilst your own time is best spent ‘doing what you do best’.

In the autumn I am presenting a series of free breakfast seminars across the Nwes region. The events will cover many of the questions we are regularly asked, and will be particularly focussed on growing your team and taking on staff.

For many businesses, this is a big step forward and a business game changer. If your business is considering the next step and you would like to find out more about how outsourcing HR could support you, we would welcome your attendance.